Andy Adams | Criticism

SOURCE: A review of Wells Brothers: The Young Cattle Kings in The Nation, Vol. XCII, No. 2392, May 4, 1911, p. 448.

[The following anonymous review characterizes Wells Brothers: The Young Cattle Kings as stilted and unconvincing in tone compared to Adams's earlier novels.]

The writer of [Wells Brothers, the Young Cattle Kings] began his writing a few years ago with The Log of a Cowboy, a book which, since he himself had been a cowboy for a long time, had a certain stamp of freshness and force. His later books, as his consciousness of "literary" activity has steadily increased, have declined in naturalness. The case is something like that of A. H. Bullen, whose Cruise of the Cachalot gave him a public which has not been increased by his subsequent books. We suppose even Othello might have turned out a bore in print after he had exhausted the record of his...